Manchester City continue shrewd sales with Spanish attacker to join Alavés for £1.75m

Manchester City will break the £20million mark in sales of players not even close to the first team by selling 25-year-old Spanish forward Rubén Sobrino to Deportivo Alavés.

Alavés have decided to use their option to buy the former Real Madrid academy player for €2million (£1.75million) after a one-year loan spell during which he scored 3 goals in 16 appearances.

Sobrino’s expected sale to Alavés is another sign of City’s maturation as a selling club following years of struggling to sell players for profit and often having to subsidise deals. Enes Ünal joined Villarreal for £12million earlier this summer and Aaron Mooy made his loan move to Huddersfield permanent in a deal that could rise to £10million.

Sobrino will move for a smaller fee of around £1.75million, but one that represents a profit on the £200,000 that City invested to sign him from Ponferradina in 2015. He was initially loaned to partner club Girona to help their push for promotion to La Liga in 2015-16, but after that failed he moved up a league by joining Alavés.

Bigger challenges await City in offloading players in this transfer window, with the likes of Joe Hart, Eliaquim Mangala, Fernando, Samir Nasri and Wilfried Bony up for sale, but tougher to sell because of their high salaries.